(just a fragment for now!)
—
In the end, I had drifted back to sleep. The thought of moving around was still intimidating, and my mind seemed unable to settle down and work properly on anything I set it to. When in doubt, rest. I felt much better on my second awakening, though I still hesitated to leave my cradle. My guts had settled a little, but I didn’t trust myself to move around unsupervised, and there was still much I could accomplish before putting my new body to the test; I had a lot of research to do, and I wanted to test my memory.
I started with the crew roster and the expedition’s finances before giving up out of boredom – the Merry Widow had established a routine that was numbingly uniform, especially given its crew were all biological, and the money was no more suspicious than it had been when I had reviewed it back on Planting. I moved on to the surrounds – the ship, the still unnamed planet it orbited, and the strange complex that had drawn the expedition in the first place.
None of the scientists had come up with a plausible reason for it to exist, though their preliminary reports had all indicated that it was likely to have been made by people from around Hearthfire, and it dated well after the old settlement. The data archives they had uncovered were all garbled beyond usefulness, though they had yet to rule out viable repairs. The planet itself was a lifeless ball of rock and ice, likely barren and sterile ever since it had formed, since Garnet, was far too cool to have ever given it the energy needed for liquid water.
So that’s what Garnet is!
Without seeing the rest of the piece I think this works well. It’s a good time to do some scene-setting, during the anticipation of knowing there’s been a murder but not knowing anything about the murder, and I like how efficient this is. Ship, fringe planet, weird artifact, the short story equivalent of a late title card (!), scene.
I don’t honestly have much else to say other than you’ve maintained the flow from the last part. As far as exposition goes this seems like the effective kind to me; it gave me just the right scraps of context to heighten my curiosity in the plot rather than distracting from it.